an atom in a sea of nothing
by but seriously
Summary: He takes after an uncle he's never met. [klaus/caroline, elijah/hayley, rebekah, ensemble.]


**some notes:** I don't watch The Originals, so the characterization was a little tentative for me - tell me if I got anything wrong! Also, I know Klaus supposedly has a daughter, and supposedly this kid is some half werewolf half witch hybrid or something, but I sat down and started writing and this came of it. Idk, don't kill me.

insert mandatory complaints about FF's shitty linebreaks here.

* * *

**an atom in a sea of nothing**

.

.

He takes after an uncle he's never met.

He sees the pictures, he knows the face. It's Uncle Elijah's face but so much younger, his jaw cut with a slanted knife that is different from Elijah's strong one, the one that is so prone to clench and to grit whenever Aunt Bekah whisks him away into her study.

"Kol," she tells him, watching his face. "His name was Kol."

He had slender fingers; liked to pick bone right of its shroud of battered flesh and leave the blood streaked there—he was never one for theatrics. He never licked blood off his fingers. He was not Father. He had dimples like Father; little grooves in his cheeks that deepened when he smiled, but that was where the similarities end.

He lifts the picture and squints at it. He wonders why she tells him these stories like bedroom hymns, drifting away into his dreams to be inspected under some otherworldly light. She's still looking at him so intently, so he shrugs and says, "You and him have the same nose."

Aunt Bekah smiles. "So do you."

—

It's his city, his playground, the still of the night ushering him to take a bite, to see what these bricked walls and dusty cobblestones have to offer-round a corner and see people crouching in fear, shell-shocked to even whisper his name.

You are your father's son, Uncle Elijah says sagely.

"I was walking home from _school_," he replies, frowning.

His uncle gives him a wan smile. "That doesn't stop you from making friends, I hope?"

It doesn't. Not really – not after they stop pissing their pants whenever he walks up the steps, Father's henchman flanked at his side. They thought his father some important, dangerous man, and they'd be right. He took the city by night, and gave back just enough for them to scrape by come morning time.

He has a friend. Asha. She's sweet, with soft gray eyes and a smile that is entirely too disarming for its own good. Sometimes he thinks he might love her, but he's careful not to. Father has a penchant for finding these things out.

Sometimes he wonders if he hates him for it.

He's careful not to.

—

"Hey, honey," Mother greets him as he walks in. She's stirring something on the stove. It smells sweet, like it would trickle off of a spoon. He feels his mouth watering.

He gives her cheek a peck as he passes by, and she looks up from the boiling pot long enough to give him an affectionate, but tired glance. "How was school?"

"It was okay. We got our Chem papers back today." He slips it across the island and Mother catches it deftly by her fingertips without even turning around.

"An A+!" she exclaims. He imagines her cheeks puffing and her eyes crinkling when she smiles. She's a beautiful woman, but she's getting old – he can see it in the way she wakes up in the morning. Not opening her eyes until she absolutely has to. "Should we stick this on the fridge?"

He makes a face. "Mother."

She makes one back. "I was kidding. Go show this to Rebekah, she'll be thrilled." She slides the paper right back to him where it floats into his hands. He doesn't quite have his mother's natural instincts. He thinks it will come after he triggers, but Mother's adamant on not letting it.

It's my life, he wants to tell her reproachfully.

But she'll say, _you're my life_, and to say that doesn't make him feel a little bit sad would be a lie.

—

He finds father instead. He's painting, hands stained, his face oddly at peace. There's some classical music wafting from the speakers clamped to the walls, and he tilts his head, enjoying it. Father's music choices were usually much darker, but this feels light. Airy.

"Colour," he says, coming up behind Father. "That's unusual."

"I thought I'd try something new," Father tells him. His hands rub his chin as he regards the canvas thoughtfully, and his scruff is painted red and gold. "How was the test?"

"How did you—" He pauses and just passes the paper instead. He's long stopped wondering how it is he knows all these things. Can't his old man just let himself be surprised for once?

Old man, he wants to laugh. He looks more suite to be an older brother; the thought of him bent over diapers and being puzzled over milk formulas sounded ridiculous, but Aunt Bekah liked to come to his defense and assure him that he did do all those things. 3AM feeding duties, playdates scheduled (with only the trusted few, of course) – you got it.

He wonders how it would be when he grows older than even his father.

"I'm proud of you," Father says after flipping through, eyes roving over equations and meticulously-drawn diagrams. He sends him a smile. "Showed Aunt Bekah yet? She'd be over the moon. She's been looking for an excuse to buy you a Jaguar for years – even before you could walk."

He feels his heart stop in its tracks. "A Jaguar? No way."

His father's grin widens to match his. "Just don't tell her I told you. She'd desecrate me."

"You always did like spoiling all the fun," he grumbles, but it's good-natured and Father doesn't look too disgruntled.

—

"You useless little—just _come over_, what is your problem? You're always welcome here, despite my little snips about your hair and your inability to keep that useless manwhore Damon in check... I have to go. I'll call you later." Aunt Bekah waves her hand and her laptop screen goes blank. She swivels around in her chair. "Darling heart. What have you got for me today?"

"Was that Caroline?" he asks in lieu of an answer. "Does Father know you two still keep in touch?"

"There's little your father doesn't know – or pretends to know." His aunt rolls her eyes. Taking jabs at his father, however cheap, still remain her favourite thing. "But no. He is blissfully clueless, and I'd like to keep it that way. His birthday is coming up," she says as if he needs reminding.

In the reflection of her laptop screen they could be classmates. He's still trying to wrap his head around the fact that he'll be her age in just a little under two years. She notices him staring and gives him a soft smile. She knows how to make herself look older – a little eyeshadow, a brush of colour over her cheeks, eyes lined with a dark grey, clothing selected with great care – but it's still not convincing enough for him to bring friends home.

Asha always looked so fascinated when he explained his strange little family's dynamic to her.

"So your uncle is dating your mom..." She squints down at his hastily-drawn family tree. "Right? And your dad's totally cool with this?"

"He never really loved her, I guess," he shrugs. He reaches for his sketchbook, but she's not done yet. It's not until she lets out a little snort that he feels his face flaming over, and why does she _do this_ to him?

"Another one of me, Mikaelson?" she asks, eyebrows bobbing suggestively. "If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were in love with me."

"Don't be ridiculous," he mutters.

—

His father's birthday passes without much fanfare. (His father's birthday passes without Caroline.)

But there is cake, a lot of it, and it's smashed into father's face before he's allowed to look too pensive.

—

He stands there clutching his graduation cap, shifting from foot to foot. It fits too tight around his forehead but Mother is insisting he puts it on, _just one more picture, kid._

Uncle Elijah looks the proudest he's ever seen him, with his brilliantly cut suit. He'd followed his uncle to his personal tailor's the other day and had watched his reflection being measured, prodded with pins, watched as bits of fabric and were aligned to his body to form the suit that he wears today.

He stands next to Uncle Elijah and he knows they look a splitting image of father and son, Mother's hand wrapped around his shoulders, her warm chocolate eyes twinkling with tears that haven't yet fallen. Aunt Bekah's grinning so widely he fears her face might fall apart, and Father keeps clearing his throat every so often, looking at him in such a brusque way.

He wonders how Kol would react, should he still be alive today.

His chocolate eyes meet his father's blues. He's forever stuck in his twenties, and he's quickly catching up. How long have you been twenty? he'd asked.

"A few... years." His father's mouth twists. "A few hundred."

"A thousand years," Aunt Bekah chimes in softly.

He remembers how his eyes had darted to Mother's, and an understanding had passed between them, still and tacit. They're a speck of off a millennium, an atom in a sea of nothing. His father, Aunt Bekah, Elijah—they make up the millennium.

Maybe that's why Elijah is so slow to wrap his arms around Mother, hesitant to even press a kiss to her forehead. Love, it does such strange things to your heart – it makes you afraid when you should be celebrating it.

We live such short lives, he wants to tell his uncle. And you're still so afraid to love my mother.

—

He still curls up in his mother's bed some nights. She holds him so warmly, loves him so freely, the only two beings in this house with blood pumping hot in their veins and hearts that beat faster in the dark.

"I was your age when I had you," she whispers into his hair. "I think, in some ways, it was the best thing that's ever happened to me. I found my family."

"What are we going to do when we grow too old for them?" he asks, and his mother, she hugs him so much more closer for that—he never knows how to say these things in the daylight, never knows how to unlock these words from his chest the way his hand moves so easily over paper.

"Oh, honey." That's all she does; just murmurs into his hair. "They are still going to be here. No one is going to leave you behind."

"Nor you," he points out.

"It took me a long time to figure it out, you know," his mother confides. "But your father loves me in his own little way. He just doesn't know how to show it. He's _hopeless_ with it. Caroline would be a prime example of that."

_Caroline_, he mouths. Always this name, whispered behind closed doors with furtive glances to make sure father isn't around. He wants to put a face to this name, needs to – this woman who strikes so much devotion in his father's heart that he cannot bear to even see her.

Do her cheeks blush prettily? Does her hair curl around her shoulders like Asha's? Is her smile entirely too disarming for her own good?

"You should ask him about her," his mother prods of his silence.

He closes his eyes, pretends to be asleep.

—

Marcel comes over to help decorate for Christmas.

"My man!" he bellows, clapping him on the back. "Sorry I wasn't there at your graduation—had some things to wrap up."

"That was a year ago," he tells Marcel, who just rubs the back of his head and grins sheepishly.

"Was it? Time – it runs away from us."

It doesn't run from Marcel. He still looks as young and as strong as he's always looked, in his muscle shirt and dog tags.

"Get these to Davina?" Marcel passes him a box of tinsel. "She's crazy about 'em."

Davina's in the drawing room, giggling over some of Father's paintings with Josh. He gives them a shrewd smile; best not let his father catch them.

"This woman," Davina doubles over gasping, "she has three boobs."

Josh explodes with laughter. "Oh man. Merry friggin Christmas to me."

He just rolls his eyes and passes them the box. "Aren't you supposed to be decorating? And you're looking at it upside down, by the way."

He tilts it for them, and Davina's giggles die in her throat as her face turns red. "That—oh, wow. That's a new way of drawing testicles."

"Urgh, come on, I don't wanna see that," Josh groans. "Your dad needs to get laid."

—

"Aunt Bekah," he starts, and then falters.

"Hm?" She's perched on top of a ladder, dusting the chandelier. Christmas is the only time they don't call the help over—Mother insisted on it, and everyone begrudgingly respected it.

"How did Kol die?"

Her hand slips. A piece of crystal falls shattering to the floor.

He winces. Father's going to be _pissed_.

"What's got your mind wondering to such morose thoughts, sweetling?" Aunt Bekah asks after a moment to recover.

"Call it morbid fascination," he says flatly.

She peers down at him. She's so high up and not even remotely afraid of falling and breaking her back. Her bones will join back together, her skull will mend—what is there to fear for her?

_Love_, his heart whispers.

"An innocuous wen—a girl named Elena Gilbert stuck a White Oak dagger in his chest," she says. "And then proceeded to burn her house down, where he still lay. In case you were wondering why only one of my dead brothers has a tombstone."

"The same innocuous wench who's coming tomorrow night?" he asks.

"I didn't say that," his aunt reprimands and clucks her tongue. "Such a filthy little tongue you have. I've half a mind to wash it out with soap."

He grins at her, and she rolls her eyes. "But yes. The very one. Can't believe this—ask a girl over for Christmas and she brings the whole wretched town with her."

"Caroline's finally coming, then?"

Uncle Elijah steps into the foyer, chuckling lightly. "Why must you ask things you already know? I saw you shuffling through the place cards."

"It's more amusing the way Aunt Bekah says it," he tells his uncle, and scuttles out of the room to avoid the rag she whips at his head.

"Little brat!" she calls after him, but Elijah's laughter drowns it out.

—

Father's on edge, pacing to and fro in his room.

"I suggest the silver tie, Father," he says. "It goes well with your anxiety. Are you planning on wearing it on your sleeves?"

"The cufflinks will do just fine without your incessant tongue, thanks," his father bites out before flopping down into his favourite arm chair, fingers rubbing at his eyes. "I apologize, son. It's just this—damn dinner party your mother so insists on having."

Yes, the one Mother insisted on having. Which is why he overheard her throwing clothes out of her closet, holding dresses up in front of the mirror, cursing under her breath. "Shit, Bekah. _Shit_. These people _hated_me back then—I just. Shit. What was I _thinking_?"

Sounds about right.

"Shouldn't you be getting ready?" Father frowns up at him. "Is that what you're going to wear?"

"I don't take as long as you to get ready, Father." He runs a light finger down the window pane, fiddles with the hem of his shirt. "I also don't need a refresher on how to impress the ladies tonight."

His father's eyes narrow. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"I set her place card next to yours tonight." He smiles.

"Son—"

"Does she like chocolate mousse? With the Bourbon-soaked cherries? I put her down for green tea ice-cream on purpose. Perhaps you could feed yours to her."

Father lets out something that sounds like a cross between a groan and a moan, his eyes shut tight. "You shouldn't be talking to Aunt Bekah."

"You shouldn't be making promises you can't keep," he tells his father with an eyeroll. "Were you really going to take to the grave without seeing her at all? Oh right—you can't die. Which makes it even _worse_."

His father opens one eye lazily. "I think all those conversations about Kol have rubbed off of you. You sound so much like him."

"Intelligent, speaks the hard truth, and highly logical?"

"Sarcastically delusional as well."

He rubs the back of his head. "I dunno, Dad—I think I might have picked that up from you."

And his thousand-years old father smiles, his face warming, his heart unfreezing. "You called me—"

"Dad, yeah," he says again. He strides up to his father and presses a firm hand down on his shoulder. "Merry Christmas."

—

The doorbell rings. He takes great, lengthy steps across the foyer to be the first to reach the door and his hand pauses on the handle.

His mother is leaning down from the bannister above him, watching silently. She looks beautiful, in her floor length red-dress with the sheer flowing sleeves, hair swept back elegantly. She looks older than the company their expecting, he knows—but it's alright, because she would fit right in with Uncle Elijah, at the head of the table.

"I love you," he tells her so honestly that it might break him.

His mother smiles. "Tell them to wipe their damn feet before coming in."

And she sweeps away to check on the turkey.

He opens the door. The oddest group of people stand before him, and his eyes pick out the asshole almost immediately – the one standing a little ways off from them, smirking his brilliant blue eyes up at the stone gargoyles and the coiled, burnished gold.

"Good evening," he tells them.

Elena can't stop staring at him. His smile widens. She shouldn't worry so much; it's not like he has fangs.

"Thanks for having us," the one that must be Stefan speaks up, giving a little wave. He's seen pictures of him and his father with arms wrapped around each other's shoulders from back in the 20's. He has a closed-off face and cold, cold eyes – but when he smiles it more than makes up for it. And he's smiling now, when a blonde with hair like the sun nudges him into offering his hand.

"Gee, manners much?" she asks, and turns her twinkling blue eyes on him. "I'm Caroline, by the way."

He hadn't been expecting someone this engaging, if you consider how his father is. He is quite mesmerized. "Come in," he says, his voice dropping just a fraction of a decibel. He clears his throat. "My family's waiting for you in the drawing room."

"I hope they're serving something strong. Airport security here is a pain in my ass," Damon Salvatore grumbles, shouldering past him. He makes a mental note to tell Lucia to spit in his wine later, and offers him a pleasant smile, ushering the rest in, closing the door soundly after them.

Caroline looks right at home, but he can detect a hint of trembling in her fingers when she unwinds her arms from her shimmering shawl.

Nice shawl, he wants to say. It matches the anxiety in my father's tie, he doesn't add.

"Caroline."

He holds in his breath, watching as his father makes his way down the stairs, eyes fixed on her. It's like Stefan, Elena, Damon – they fall away along with the rest of the world, the way he drinks her in, the way his hands automatically fold behind his back, something he knows his father only does when he doesn't quite know what to do with them.

And Caroline, she smiles at him, and he has never seen his father so entirely, entirely disarmed.

He really is his father's son.

Damon gives a pointed cough, and he frowns at him—makes sure to tell Alfonse to put in some raw egg whites in his mousse. But, douchebag or no, Damon does have a point.

Caroline just laughs softly. "So, Klaus. Are you going to show us around or not?"

"Of course," his father says with a duck of his head, and he just wants to cringe for him—a thousand years on earth and this is all his game amounts to?

Father offers her his arm and she slips her hand into the crook of it, and the way he looks at her so tenderly—he suddenly sees Uncle Elijah, the way he regards her with a tilt of his head, when he knows Mother isn't looking.

The doorbell rings again. He turns to Stefan, who'd been a quiet onlooker the whole time. "Are we expecting more people?"

"Nah, it's just us," Stefan says. It's just us. He turns to Elena. "Shall we?"

He walks back to the door, turns the handle—and it's Asha, her lips turned into a sweet smile that begged to be kissed off her lips, wrapped in green velvet that made her skin look so comely. Not for the first time, his heart skips a beat. "I—it's..."

It's a family dinner. Uncle Elijah had made it very clear. To take care of old family business that has been aging like wine in their cold dark cellars.

"Your dad called," Asha tells him, and passes him a gift. "Merry Christmas to you too, loser."

But the blow is softened by the soft kiss she plants on his cheek, and he finds himself touching the spot long after she's pulled away. He lets her in, listens to her exclamations on how _grand_ his house is and _why the heck_ have you never asked me over before, I'm like—your best_friend_.

His father shoots him a knowing smile, and – curse him, _curse_ him for having a penchant of always finding these things out. Always.

Sometimes he thinks he might love him for it.

_fin_


End file.
